A Group of Women at Nike Formed a Secret Plan to Change the Company Culture

Fed-up women working at Nike wanted to make change at their company—and after they banded together, they did just that. According to an investigation from the New York Times, a group of women employees secretly sent out questionnaires to other women working at the sportswear company, asking them about sexual harassment and discrimination. They dropped the results off on the CEO’s desk, and within weeks, at least six male executives announced they’d be leaving the company.

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The New York Times interviewed more than 50 current and former employees, many of whom remained anonymous due to nondisclosure agreements or fear of backlash in the industry. The report found a culture where women felt excluded from promotions and top divisions like basketball, and felt ignored by human resources when they reported problems. A separate investigation from the Wall Street Journal, published in March, uncovered similar complaints.

Nike said the issue came down to “an insular group of high-level managers [who] protected each other and looked the other way.” Since the survey, the company has started a review of its human resources department, and will make changes to how reporting is done and create mandatory management training. “That is not something we are going to tolerate,” Nike's spokesperson KeJuan Williams told the Times.

“It has pained me to hear that there are pockets of our company where behaviors inconsistent with our values have prevented some employees from feeling respected and doing their best work,” CEO Mark Parker told the Times in a statement.

Here are three revelations from the reports:

A commercial by FKA Twigs did not go as planned.

According to the Times, singer FKA Twigs was given creative license to film a commercial for their VaporMax shoe for women. But the commercial didn’t end up showing the shoes much at all, and instead featured a woman pole dancing and men wearing sports bras. The commercial ended up being canceled. “We have a history of pushing the boundaries in marketing, just as we do in product development,” Wilkins said, noting the company was proud of the partnership. “We create a lot of material that is not deployed in the marketplace.’’

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So-called “Friends of Trevor” got ahead.

Trevor Edwards, president of the Nike brand, had a lot of sway within the company. He surrounded himself with a group of close allies known colloquially as Friends of Trevor, and those friends were mostly men. Anyone who was a so-called “F.O.T” would constantly brag about how it would help their career.

“If someone was rising quickly, it was likely they were FOT,” a former employee told the Wall Street Journalin their report.

Edwards, who was widely considered to be next in line for the company’s top job, resigned from the company in March, but is advising the CEO until his retirement in August. He did not respond to the Times’ request for comment.

Nike's hard-partying culture could get out of hand.

The Times article, written by Julie Creswell, Kevin Draper, and Rachel Abrams, sums up corporate culture like this: “work hard, party hard, get up for your five-mile run in the morning.”

That hard-partying philosophy led to moments that women employees said made them feel uncomfortable, like men discussing strip clubs around women, or one man forcing his way into a bathroom to try to kiss a subordinate. The Wall Street Journal report detailed a moment when employees went to a strip club on a business trip, but the three women on the trip, plus one male colleague, declined to go inside.

But despite trying to report the issue, the employees told the Times nothing was done until they handed out the questionnaires. “[We risked punishment] for shining a light on both significant and everyday experiences that left us feeling bullied, uncomfortable and intimidated,” Sheibel said.

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